He worked steadily, pulling up more grass and brush to bare the soil, trying to make as much progress as he could. Whenever his mattock hit rock, he would pry the stone up if he could and set it at the edge of the plot. A bit later he came to a patch where there must have been a lot of shrubs and saplings. One of the men with the chain saws had come through to get rid of the standing wood, but did little with the roots. Ed stuck the pick side of the mattock under each of the roots, leaned back on the handle, and pried up the root, then tossed it aside with the rocks.

Lonny Mann was slacking. Leonard could tell. He was probably tired, or maybe just bored from the work. His movements were exaggerated. When he picked up something he’d extracted from the garden plot, he would stagger with it to the edge as though it weighed hundreds of pounds, sometimes grunting with the supposed effort.

Leonard resented it. Mann was endangering him too. The hard labor was intended to bring them closer to the members of the community, a show that the two guests were willing to make a sincere effort to fit in and contribute to the welfare of all. Leonard had been working in all sincerity from the moment he’d been awakened in the morning until now. What was now? About two-thirty, judging from the height and ferocity of the sun. Eight to noon was four hours, which made it six and a half hours he’d been at it today. He had assumed Mann was doing the same until now.

Leonard forced himself to keep his eyes off Mann while he worked. When people saw someone looking, they looked in the same direction. When he had worn himself out with the mattock and reached the edge of the cleared ground with the other men in the line with him, he stood and leaned on the handle for a moment. One of the others near him said, “Boy, I’m glad to get to the end of that row.”

“Me too,” Leonard said. “It’s a lot of work, but when the vegetables grow in, it will be worth it.”

When Lonny Mann came up to join them a few minutes later, Ed Leonard moved off to return his mattock to the tool shed and trade it for a long-handled pry bar. He returned to the foot of the vegetable plot and began to pry up rocks he hadn’t been able to budge with his mattock. He was determined to keep himself from being grouped with Lonny Mann as a faker and half-hearted worker.

A short time later, he heard the woman’s voice. “Hey, farm boy. You thirsty again?”

Charlotte was close to his shoulder with her buckets. She set them down and handed him the blue cup again. “Thank you,” he said. “This really helps.”